Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Red Dress That Just Won't Die

I Dedicate This Blog to You: I think it would be appropriate to dedicate Nothing Elegant to this lovely bit of red-polyester-goodness. I have had this dress longer than any other item in my closet (going on 13 years...). I found it stuffed in the back of my grandmother's mothball-ridden closet one lucky day, and it has been with me ever since. It might be more appropriate to dedicate this blog to my grandma, I suppose. Though she was never exactly what you might call a stereotypically stylish lady, she was always quite irreverent in her haphazard combinations of colors and prints. *Cheers" Granny!I still pull this beauty out of the closet from time-to-time, and even though I have worn it A LOT, I still manage to figure out ways of making it seem "current." This dress reminds me what is so good about a little shot of sentimentality and nostalgia in what we wear. Like a great friend, it has remained loyal despite competing with the ever-changing, ever-shifting carnival in my closet.

Be a Little More Materialistic: Looking at the dress in one of my overly-philosophic moods, I began wondering whether or not people are really as "materialistic" as we accuse them of being. Does materialism mean simply that we think about material things too much, or does it mean that we highly value the material possessions we already have? If it is the first option, then yes, I think most of us are terribly materialistic (no judgment here, I'm the same). But if it is the latter, I think the answer is more complicated. It is so easy to forget the worth of those little treasures that have value beyond their newness. All that to say, this oddly flattering, semi-oriental shift dress with weird sailboats on it helps remind me that sometimes things are just awesome because they are uniquely ours.